Historic Virginia Garden Week Returns

Photo: Kelly J Mihalcoe Photographer LL/Courtesy Virginia Tourism Corporation

The flowers will be in bloom once again in time for the return of Historic Garden Week to Virginia and Newport News. Presented by The Garden Club of Virginia, Historic Garden Week celebrates its seventy-seventh anniversary by showcasing more than two hundred of Virginia’s most beautiful gardens, homes and historic landmarks during “America’s Largest Open House,” April 17 through 25, 2010.

Visitors are invited to the Hampton Roads area during the April 21 Newport News-Hampton club tour, which includes properties in York County from the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. After the tour, take a short drive to Lee Hall Mansion, a stately, historic antebellum plantation house, which features grounds that were landscaped by the Garden Club of Virginia with funding from Historic Garden Week tours.

While your group is there, be sure to visit the Virginia Living Museum’s Virginia Garden. The entrance to the garden is just as though the visitor is a settler arriving in Virginia in 1607. Guests can explore four hundred years of gardening in Virginia, including native wild plants and plantings that the colonists brought with them from Europe. The Garden Club of Virginia awarded the Huntington Garden Club its Common Wealth Award for this interesting project. The museum is also home to a three thousand-square-foot “Conservation Garden” and a six hundred-square-foot “Living Green House” environmental education center. Visitors can learn all about earth-friendly products and gardening techniques. The Green House opened on June 20, 2009, and is the first of its kind in Virginia and one of the first anywhere in the United States.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” in the Huntington Park Rose Garden. This beautifully landscaped area comes complete with a scenic gazebo and features over forty-five different rose varieties. In 2002, Newport News was named an American Rose City by the American Rose Society, the first city in Virginia to earn that distinction.
Additional Garden Week tours are offered throughout the week, including Williamsburg on April 20, Norfolk on April 22, and Virginia Beach on April 21. Can’t make it this year? Historic Garden Week will be back April 16 through 24, 2011.

“Stop and smell the roses” in Newport News. Bring your group to experience all the beauty the season and city have to offer! For more information on Historic Garden Week, or the upcoming Virginia Arts Festival, April 15 through May 30, 2010, contact Trista Attoh, group tour marketing manager for the Newport News Tourism Development Office, at 757-926-1442, toll-free at 888-493-7386, or by e-mail at tattoh@nngov.com.

Read about more beautiful group opportunities in Virginia by visiting www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/serendipity/pti-20100102/index.php?startid=54.